Controversial merger bid back on the cards at Great Yarmouth town hall

27 Jul Controversial merger bid back on the cards at Great Yarmouth town hall

A merger bid that would see Great Yarmouth’s town hall run by a shared chief executive is back on the table.

The borough council’s Conservative leader Graham Plant is looking to link up with a neighbouring authority to save cash after he took over the helm of the council from Labour’s Trevor Wainwright.

Mr Plant said the authority was having to consider sharing a chief executive as incumbent Gordon Mitchell, appointed on an interim basis, was due to leave his post in December.

Coupled with the government advising local teams to seek out cost effective measures, a merge of services had come back to the fore he added.

“Of course we’re looking at it, we have to find a way to balance the books, to keep the cost for rate payers low and have effective management.

“We’re pulling together departments and putting them in the town hall so we can work as a more close knit unit. That’s the efficiency side of it but there’s more to be done,” he said.

The move will see the controversial issue of sharing services back on the cards, after it caused a furore in the town hall in 2012.

At the beginning of 2012 the borough council was poised to team up with Breckland and South Holland in Lincolnshire. But the plans were axed just a few weeks later after Labour wrested control from the Tories in the local elections and vowed never to have a shared chief executive.

Mr Plant said no formal talks had been held with any neighbouring authorities but he had spoken to fellow leaders to make an “expression of interest”.

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